The Best Ramen in NYC, Carefully Selected By a Ramen Connoisseur
Ramen Ishida has occupied a shoebox space on the Lower East Side for almost a decade. The dining area might as well be in the kitchen—there are just a handful of stools set against counters that wrap around the walls—and you can see chef Yohei Ishida expertly folding noodles into bowls on most days. A second, larger, and swankier location opened up just recently in Chelsea. The primary focus of the menu is clear-soup ramen, but the overall quality of everything on the menu is very high—the toppings, the other bowls of ramen, the sides, and especially the gyoza in broth. The real gem at Ishida, however, is off-menu: the ' '80s Shoyu,' which is infused with an exhilarating amount of dried fish. It's only served at the LES location, and only when Ishida is manning the stove.
At Tonchin, a Tokyo-based chain, the noodles are made in-house, and the seasoning is perfect.
Courtesy Tonchin
13 W 36th St, Midtown
109 N 3rd St, Williamsburg
Tonchin is a Tokyo-based tonkotsu-focused chain that has a couple locations in New York (and one in Los Angeles). The menu is more expansive than the ones at mega ramen chains like Ippudo and Ichiran, and straying from ramen can be an expensive (but tasty) enterprise. The ramen is excellent; the noodles are made in-house; the toppings are carefully, consistently prepared; and the soups are rich, not too thick, and beautifully seasoned. The two standout bowls are the Smoked Dashi ramen, which has an aggressive dried fish punch and comes topped with clams, and the Original Tsukemen, which comes with two kinds of noodles—a nest of thick tubular noodles and a single wide and fat noodle—for dipping.
172 Delancey St, Lower East Side
It isn't surprising that Hidetoshi 'Jack' Nakamura makes some of the best ramen in NYC, since he's something of a legend in Japan and, thanks to his work as a development chef with Sun Noodle, he was instrumental in popularizing ramen in the city. What's surprising is that in addition to offering standout examples of a clear-broth chicken shoyu and a straightforward tonkotsu, the menu has a mysteriously good vegan xo miso ramen. Nakamura also has tsukemen and mazemen on the menu, which migrated over from the menu next door at his now-defunct mazemen-focused restaurant, Niche. While everything on the menu deserves to be tried once, the pan-fried gyoza are some of the best in the city.
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